The present invention relates to a method of compensating sensitivity fluctuations in signals received from hydrophones, or hydrophone arrays referred to as staves, disposed in a transducer arrangement, for the purpose of subsequent signal processing, for example in a sonar system, wherein the received signals are influenced by the sensitivity of the hydrophones and/or the gain of preamplifiers connected to the outputs of the hydrophones.
Such a method is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,090,169. In this method, operational data from hydrophones or hydrophone arrays, so-called staves, are determined in a special measuring apparatus in which a transmitting transducer is positioned at a defined distance directly opposite the hydrophone to be surveyed. The phases and amplitudes of the hydrophones are then measured relative to one another on the basis of the transmitted signal and are matched to one another by means of external calibrating means so that, for a plane wave, the signals of predetermined frequencies received from the hydrophones have the same amplitudes and phases. Such a method requires expensive, special measuring devices and permits calibration of the hydrophones only under the conditions predetermined by the calibration structure. Additional changes in the operating data, as they may occur as a result of the inclusion of another hydrophone or hydrophone array in the operation, are by nature not detected and thus not corrected either.